“I would kill for her…’’ so many have said these words and crumbled on the first moment of adversity their lustborn relationship faced. I make sure that Lisa and I are not prone to such outlandish promises, idealistic fantasies, or utopian standards. We are both occupants of many faults, and we own them as we do each other.
“That would be six dollars,” said the ice cream vendor as I hoarded my thoughts. He handed me two cones of honey-flavored ice cream in exchange for a few green papers, and on the edge of it, he had inadvertently scooped an additional portion. I didn’t remind him of it. Giving him an amiable smile, I began my return to her, Lisa.
We were driving in the middle of nowhere when she spotted this roadside vendor from half a mile away. Immediately I parked the car and crossed two roads in the pitch-black night. The only light of which was from this unnamed vendor’s unknown transport. I had asked him why he waited here of all places. It was obviously suspicious to be residing in an unmanned roadway. To which he replied that the transport itself was his home and that he wanted to feed the wandering souls that lay from the dark night. I didn’t ask further.
I crossed the road from him and entered the tiny green patchway of trees through which Lisa saw the vendor from. Her eyes when hungry are better than that of a predator in the African savannah. Walking through the dark green shrubs that glided on my jeans and the brown tree trunks that grinded at my jacket, on a night as dark as this, the old me would have trembled like a possum on trial for murder. Now that I know of a destination to reach, I feel nothing but purpose… the purpose to subside her hunger. Crossing the green patch of trees and another large road that followed, I returned to the car where I had left the woman I love. The ice cream had begun to melt from its honey mold through the webbing of my fingers, and my mouth had also begun to melt on the prospect of eating it with Lisa. She opened the door for me and smiled endlessly, like a woman madly in love.
“I brought treats,” I told the smiling lass. She clapped her hands like a five-year-old being brought candies.
As she began devouring the frosted honey milk from its waffle mold, her eyes were transfixed onto me. Those wild green eyes with a grandiose black pool in the middle.
She asked, “What is it that you love the most about me?”
It was just then when the first droplet of a black rain splattered on the windshield of our Bentley. And then followed a frenzy behind it, both loud and rampant. None of it was audible to my ears though… for they were mesmerized by the lips of the woman sitting at the edge of my hands.
“Well mostly, it’s the money that I love most,” I said in a nonchalant manner. “It also helps that you’re hot,” I added.
Lisa cracked up with an ice cream filled laugh and hit my chest playfully. “I’m serious,” she said in the shrillest of voices.
“It’s better to show you,” I said, and plucked the sound system of the two-week-old Bentley. As the music slowly built up to surround our solitary ears, I could see her white teeth slowly hiding behind those supple pink lips. She smiled the same way from the day we met, five years ago. Where this song played the melody to our timely love. Even today, when we are surrounded by the metal frame elevated by four wheels on the road, as the song seeps into me, I could see the bright lights of the Chardaine Ball, where beneath the largest chandelier I had ever seen stood a woman even more beautiful. She wore a red dress that cut off above her chest, but her luscious brown hair dressed all that was exposed. As I closed the distance to her by some magical pull her body emanated, her green eyes veered in on the brown of mine. We stood there at that moment, to the song that will forever be ours, with a smile we never will regret. I had fallen in love.
“What is it that you love about me?” asked I to the lovestruck bee who had just devoured the cone her ice cream came in.
“Well… mostly the sex,” she said, chuckling.
Making a face of utterly obvious shock and perplexion, I crossed my arms in an outlandish manner. “I feel so used,” I said, barely able to contain my laughter. She couldn’t.
It was on nights like this, where nothing but the two of us existed in this dark, timid world that I realize how much we are meant to be. For when I look into the deep black void at the center of her eyes, I could see nothing but the future that awaits us gracefully. Staring at one another for a few seconds as our fingers touch at the tips, I leaned in on her lips once more for the billionth time, where she still tasted the same as when we collided for the first time. Her cold, hollow breaths consumed the warm ones that emanated from me, and her warm, nimble lips sweetened the husky, brawn ones of mine. She was mine, and I was hers at that moment and all the moments to come.
“I love you,” I said, still holding the nape of her neck.
“I love you too,” she returned, locking in on my dumbstruck eyes. “And I mean it… No one can understand me like you do, Lloyd… No one,”
“I know,” I replied as her hands tightened over mine.
Many couples have things they do together. Some, bound by love pick up the habits of their partner and learn to accept the beauty in them. And others act as if they could handle the passion that drives their significant other’s heart. For Lisa, it was hunting. She was a woman not afraid to be covered in blood, nor berate me for being too afraid of it.
“You still have some dirt on your face,” I said to her, taking the tissue out and cleaning her pampered face again.
“Thank you,” she replied with a smile.
I wonder sometimes of the life I would have led if I had not met Lisa. A life so afraid of the blood we pour ourselves with. A life so boring and predictable. A life void of the green passion her red heart radiates.
“I have the mood to taste strawberries today,” she said as I started the car.
“Oh… should I stop somewhere on the way back ho–” I stopped by the crazy look she gave me. “Oh… that strawberry,” I laughed out loud and pushed the pedal into the thundering rain that poured outside.
Most people lie with fancy words for their relationships like the one we talked about before and then flee at the first sight of blood. With Lisa, I adored her for it. For inviting me into her flaming passions, her wild hunts, and her painless killings. We kissed once again before departing the deserted road where we stood three hours ago to subside her wild hunger… This time, I was able to provide her with the prey she yearned for… I looked back through the window once more where we buried it with fresh blood all over… her latest prey… our latest prey… “I would kill for her,” I repeated, just as I told the man who served us with those honey delights.
